Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Kerman Police Officer Adds His Perspective

This is one of the reasons I love the Internet.
Before it existed we were stuck with expensive telephone bills as we attempted
to track down and interview witnesses in UFO cases. When we could afford to do
so we might travel long distances to interview a witness in person. Today cell phones
have eliminated the telephone charges and allow us to find witnesses much more cheaply
and easily. We are able to confirm information that has been published by
others and get to the bottom of some of those UFO reports.

Illustration of the UFO encounter.

And, in some cases, the witness himself
provides us with the information when he or she finds our postings. Such,
apparently, is the case here. I noticed that the major witness in the Kerman,
California UFO sighting and burn case has appended comments to this blog. Here
I go with my intuition that the comments were made by Manuel J. Amparano and
move them from the comments section to a more prominent place. Here is what he
had to say about his sighting (I debated about correcting some of the
typographical errors but decided to leave it as is because we all can
understand it and we can see it in the comments sections):

On May 13, 1978, I Kerman Senior Police Officer,
Manuel J. Amparano, had a ride along police chaplain trainee Pastor Tom
Johnson, who rode with myself until 02:30 A.M., Kerman Police Officers, Arvin
J. Byington and Robert Mueller, were with me until 03:20 A.M., After the
sighting, I drove to the Savemart store parking lot on Whitesbridge and Madera
Avenues, to make sense of what I had just witnessed. I was shortly met by Phil
Maher a retired Special Deputy US Marshal, who reported observing a bright
reddish orb flying east parallel to his location at Whitesbridge and Grantland
Avenues, where he had stopped his vehicle. I wonder, where did I have time to
use a sunlamp. After speaking with Phil, I went to the police station and began
to call the Fresno Airport Control Tower, Air National Guard and Fresno
Meteorologist Station, located at the airport at the time. It was during this
time, when Officers Byington and Mueller came back to the station, to check the
work schedule, when they witnessed I was sunburned. They asked me what the hell
happened to you while we were gone. It was Officers Byington and Mueller, who
said that years later there was an area in the field where the UFO had hovered,
where nothing would grow, it was just a circular round spot in the field. I
learned about this event years later as I had left Kerman for a position with
the Fresno County Sheriff's department. I was also told by Deputy Paul Baker,
that a deputy working out of the Town of San Juaquin southwest of Kerman had
also viewed the UFO and wrote a report. I ask, did anybody bother to interview
these witnesses, before debunking without having the facts. Chief Van Cleaf
filled out the workman comp request form from information obtained from
Officers Byington and Mueller. Chief Van Cleaf was not the type of police
officer, who would fake a report, far from it. It was also reported in the
Fresno Bee, that Chief Van Cleaf, reported that he was in contact with an Air
force Major, working out of the office of the secretary of the air force at the
pentagon. If you travel to the place of occurrence, and view the terrain,
interview witnesses as to their location during the sighting and what they
observed first hand, then you can give your opinion by obtaining evidence first
hand. I did not report to the hospital until fifteen and ahalf hours after the
sighting. Officers Byington, Mueller and officer Ed Singh, who relived me and
witnessed my burnt condition, pleaded with me to go to the hospital for medical
treatment. I delayed as long as I could stand the pain, as I did not want what happened
to me to get out to the public. Officer Byington, had called my wife to check
on my condition, as he told her while in the station, he and Mueller observed
my body twitching. My wife Barbara told Byington , that she had observed the
same thing while checking in on me while I was a sleep. Officer Byington told
her get him to the hospital. It was my wife who first observed blisters on my
ears, and this was reported to the doctors at community hospital. I was told by
the doctors that this was new to them and they did not know how to treat my
condition. I was given codine pills to help with the pain that they observed, I
was experiencing while in the examination room. I was under doctors care for
about a month after the sighting.

So here is a first-hand account of the events
that transpired in 1978. I will note, so that we don’t have to put up with an
endless debate that these words were written nearly three decades after the
fact which does not make them inaccurate but certainly subject to unintentional
modification over time. Doesn’t mean that there was any modification and the
best way to verify it is to go back to the original sources to see what was
said and published at the time to compare it with what we have today. I did
some of this by including in the original postings what was written about the
case in 1978. For those interested in the earlier reports, they can be found
at:

Amparano also suggested that some descriptions
in the posting were wrong even though many of them came from sources published
at the time. He wrote:

I retired officer Manuel Amparano never
reported or said, any of the comments that I have read on this blog. I never
did report a silver object, I reported an object the color of the setting sun.
I also never said, that the object was up in the sky as some of you people are
stating. It was reported as below tree top level which made it appear a tree
was on fire. There is no known atlas rocket that can hover behind a tree and
not make any noise. The report of my encounter mentions that I felt a tingling
sensation as I viewed the unknown object. You people got it all wrong read the
true reports that were printed by some news media.

There is information reported in various
sources from 1978 that seem to suggest something else. The altitude of the
object is said to have been between 100 and 150 feet in the air, which suggests
that it was above the trees. When he saw it from a distance, it probably did
look as if it was in the trees, or a tree on fire as he suggested at the time,
but when he approached it, a better estimate of the altitude could be made. In
other words, and to prevent a discussion on how difficult it is to estimate
size and altitude at night of an unknown object, it would have become apparent
that the UFO was above the trees when he got closer to it.

The description of the object seems to have
changed. In 1978, Coral Lorenzen wrote, “The object was hovering, was a ‘silver
aluminum, round’ craft which the witness approached fairly close.” Amparano,
however, disagreed with this when he wrote:

Yes, this is somewhat confusing. Amparano wrote
that the Phenomena Research had mentioned the reddish glow and I don’t know if
this was APRO or some other organization. The ARPO Bulletin of August 1978 does include the “silver aluminum,
round” craft in quote as if it came from Amparano. According to the Bulletin, APRO Field Investigator Peter
Escobedo reported that he had talked to Amparano and it appears that Amparano
did give him the description of the silver aluminum craft. According to a
reporter for Los Angeles Herald-Examiner,
Steve Comus, and based on the descriptions provided at the time, the object was
circular and about thirty feet in diameter… The only objection seems to be the
comment about it having a silver color. The
APRO Bulletin does mention the orange glow. But, it should be noted that
the APRO story was put together based on what Escobedo and Comus had discovered
during their interviews with Amparano within days of the sighting in 1978. The
source of the silver color quote appears to be in an article that Amparano
wants us to review.

In keeping with all this, Amparano takes issue
with some of the other information, conclusions or assumptions made by
commentators. He wrote:

Albert said, I referred to the ufo as the size
less than a full moon, bogus information as nothing of the sort was ever
reported in the media or police reports. Lance said, sheriff filled out comp
report, I was a Kerman police officer not a Fresno County Deputy Sheriff and no
sheriff filled out my workmans comp, bogus information again. It appears
someone is spreading false information about the kerman ufo. Please obtain the
correct information before you make a false comment. I have copies of all the
known news reports and nothing compares with what you people are discussing.

But going back to the other sources, it is
noted that this information was reported

Coral Lorenzen

in 1978 and some of the sources Amparano
quoted have been used to gather the information. The NICAP website used the Fresno Bee as one of their sources. The
NICAP site said the UFO was smaller than the full moon and that it was
oval-shaped. Both the sources from 1978 and those from today seem to confirm
what was reported here which was based on the interviews and words of Amparano
collected in 1978.

And since there were those overly concerned
about the filing of the Workman’s Compensation claims, he wrote:

Gentlemen, If a medical employee working at
Fresno Community Hospital had not leaked out my medical condition or how I
received my sunburn condition to the local media, this debate would not be
taking place. I did not wish to cause damage to my police career, and I did
receive a setback as Kerman Chief Of Police James Van Cleaf prior to leaving
for a position with Dixon Police Department passed me up for a sergeant position
because of the UFO sighting which leaked out from the hospital. Chief Van Cleaf
was not my friend and he did not want a police officer going in front of the
media and confirming he observed a UFO while on duty. Officer A.J. Byington a
witness was asked by the chief what he had witnessed that night and was not
ordered to write a report as were the other officer;s involved with the
sighting. The other officers and police chaplain, my ride along that night
confirmed my condition when I reported to work, and what occurred during the
night shift. Enough said, "gentlemen".

What is interesting here is not the information
about the compensation claim but the information that the report caused
Amparano some personal trouble. As we have seen in other UFO reports, those
making them often find that their careers suffer. We have heard of police
officers who leave law enforcement, pilots who find themselves “flying” a desk,
and military personnel who are persuaded to “modify” their reports. This is
just another example of it coming from the man who suffered the consequences.

Finally we also get some information about the
other witnesses in the case. While, at this point, they can hardly be
considered independent of one another, it is corroboration. Amparano tells us:

May 13,1978, UFO chronological order of
sighting's by witnesses to event, occurring in City of Kerman. First sighting
began at 02:30 A.M., Trinity and Shaw Avenues, by a farmer who notified north
central fire department Kerman station of a grass fire in a field. A fire truck
from Kerman and one from the town of Biola responded to the given location
reported. The firemen found no evidence of a fire in the field. About 03:00
A.M. a farmer Thomas Addis observed a glowing red object flying across his
fields in a southeast direction at Trinity and Belmont avenues, at treetop
level. This sighting was reported to Kerman police detective Tom Gilpin.At
03:30 A.m. Lisa Harrison, a housewife observed the object approaching the city
of Kerman from the northwest at treetop level from her apartment at Del Norte
and Kearney Blvd. 03:32 A.M., Kerman police officer Amparano observed what he
belived to be a tree fire at Del norte and California avenues, while stopped at
Del Norte and Whitesbridge avenues. Officer Amparano drove to the location to
confrim a tree on fire before calling out the fire department. Upon arrival
Amparano obsevered a reddish object the color of a setting sun behind a tree,
below treetop level and just above the field it was hovering over. When the
patrol car headlights flashed on the object, it began to slowly rise and
stopped approximately a hundred feet up. Ken Westbook Jr. was working in a
field near the town of Tranquillity southwest of Kerman,when he observed the
object at or above treetop level and he reported the sighting to Kerman Chief
of Police James Van Cleaf. Amparano reported that when he attempted to light
the object with his roof mounted spotlight, the object emitted a bluish white
light toward the patrol vehicle and left at a very fast speed easterly,
parallel to California avenue. Westbrook told Van Cleaf that before the object
left it flickered or flashed and disappeared. Retired Special US Marshal Phil
Maher was stopped at Whitesbridge and Grantland avenues, when he observed a
reddish ball in the sky moving east at a very fast speed. Maher gave his report
to Amparano and UFO investigator from Probe, Richard Zimmerman who later
interviewed most of the witnesses. Meteorologist Carl Smith stationed at the
Fresno air terminal reported that a day or two before Amparano's sighting he
had observed red orbs flying west of Fresno like crazy airline pilots. A crop
duster pilot flying out of an airfield in Tranquillity also reported a red orb
that appeared to be a farmhouse on fire until it started to slowly rise and fly
away at a speed faster that a jet plane. This sighting was in July during the
night after 03:00 A.M. In January of 1979, the Madera Sheriff's Department
reported similar red orbs as did Carl Smith flying northwest of Kerman in a
crazy manner and there was an explosion like two orbs colliding together. The
listed events were reported to the media and military.

So here is a report from the computer of the
man who experienced the sighting. There are problems with what was written in
1978 and what is written today. It seems that some of the descriptions of the
event are different. I have been accused in other cases of misquoting witnesses
but when I return to taped interviews, the original articles published at the
time of the sighting, and what has been published since, I find that the
witness is often mistaken. For example, J. Bond Johnson, the man who took most
of the pictures in General Ramey’s office spent a decade claiming I had
misquoted him, that I had altered his statements, and even when he heard the
tapes, he denied he had said the things he had actually said. Here we seem to
be moving into the same place. What is said today is not exactly what was said
in 1978.

This certainly provides us with a different
perspective on the case and provides first-hand testimony for it, though that testimony
is nearly three decades old. As I review the evidence, the theme here has taken
a slightly different tone. It is not nearly as cut and dried as I had expected
because much of the information in the original posts was taken from the
sources that Amparano demanded that we review now and which he claims to have
in his possession. This teaches a little about how these things work and I have
seen this time and again. The memory of what was said in 1978 isn’t exactly the
same as what was reported in 1978.

11 comments:

K Randle..."What is interesting here is not the information about the compensation claim but the information that the report caused Amparano some personal trouble. As we have seen in other UFO reports, those making them often find that their careers suffer. We have heard of police officers who leave law enforcement....."

A perfect example being PC Alan Godfrey, who was eventually hounded out of the West Yorkshire Police Force.

"...Amparano later said that the oval-shaped object was twice as wide as it was high and that it was a bright crimson, about half as large as the full moon. ..." - http://kevinrandle.blogspot.co.il/2015/06/may-13-1978-kerman-california.html .The source was IUR. Ampararo probably wouldn't have read either publication at the time. I wouldn't call them 'main-stream media'..In http://kevinrandle.blogspot.co.il/2015/06/kerman-california-ufo-case-update.html - I later stated:"...Neither the IUR nor the APRO articles quote Ampararo. Neither are the authors credited. Why should they be considered sources? It's BS. Except for the Fresno Bee, who's quoting Ampararo? Maybe IUR and APRO are quoting the Bee....".Maybe it's OK to summarize a witnesses statements. Reporters do it all the time. The issues raised years or decades later demand _actual quotations_, preferably back by recordings, or 'witnesses' present at the interview. Otherwise, it's just 'he said - she said'..Perhaps Ampararo and the various authors are persons of sterling character and impeccable integrity; I can't say. But the discrepancies need un-discrepancing.. .. . .. o

My original intent with this article was to sort of endorse what Amparano was saying because he is the main witness. But I also went back to those sources from 1978 and it seems that some of the quotes would have had to be from Amparano given the context of the statements... Coral Lorenzen didn't make up the silver quote, it came to her from the man who interviewed Amaparano in 1978. He was quick to point us to these two articles, both of which I used in my original pieces, but they don't exactly match what he is saying today. With Lorenzen dead and the Herald Express gone, it would take someone in the area to follow up by getting to libraries, newspaper archives and the like... and as I noted, the "independent" witnesses were all friends of Amparano and I'm just not sure how independent that testimony is today.

The point is, I don't think you need to defend yourself here because the information we all used was published sources which included timely interviews with Amparano.

As you know sometimes we'll never know what a witness saw many years ago. The best we can do is to try to eliminate some of the other possibilities. I contacted Jason Marzec at what appears to be his former website to let him know about the discussion on your blog. He in turn contacted Mr. Amparano. I did communicate with Mr. Amparano via the website mainly concerning the rocket launch theory. He told me that he had seen rocket launches in the past but not that night, he described them as blue green and didn't resemble what he saw. He said that none were reported to any of 14 different police agencies in the surrounding area. He told me that there had been incidents in the area where teens were setting fires in trees, this is what prompted him to investigate. This is all from memory and the Fringe Republic website doesn't exist anymore. A new website with the same name but apparently unrelated to Jason has taken it's place. I'm no internet guru so I don't know if there's a way to recover that information via an archival search.

I have an e-mail address for Jason and his phone number which I can't share by his request. If you think we can gain any further information from Mr. Amparano I could possibly contact Jason and get a message to Mr. Amparano. Jason lives in the area, he may be able to do a search for newspaper articles on the subject but I certainly can't speak for him.

Just as an aside, I knew about his responses on your blog some time ago but felt mentioning them to you would be off topic.

An interesting take on the human mind in relation to memory and witness testimony can be found in the book "The Invisible Gorilla" by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons.

The 9/11 vivid memory experiment and the various crime witness testimony examples provide clues that the human mind is not a great recording device. Clues indicate the details of an event may not stay the same over the years, even though you may vividly recall the event.

Anyway, the book may help researchers keep perspective when dealing with witness testimony that varies over time and even differences in multiple witness testimony. The book shows that such things may not necessarily speak negatively to the honesty and integrity of the witness.

Marzek also has documents at that link supporting the third-degree severity of Amparano's burns, including doctors' speculation that they might have been caused by microwaves. Also a memorandum from the Los Angeles Sheriff's department reporting a the same kind of sighting by one of its officers three months earlier. Marzek has done good work on this case. Amparano seems very credible to me in what Kevin reports.